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Authorities focus on Isanti County site in search for girl missing since 1989

Maple Grove Police Captain Keith Terlinden speaks outside of the Isanti County Sheriff's Office, May 3, 2014. Maple Grove is being assisted by the BCA, the FBI and he Isanti County Sheriff in the search.Peter Cox/MPR News

Law enforcement authorities have moved their investigation into the 1989 disappearance of Amy Sue Pagnac to a site in Stanchfield, Minnesota, in Isanti County. Amy's mother, Susan Pagnac confirmed to MPR News she and her husband, Marshall Midden, the missing girl's father, own the property being searched.

About 20 investigators and officers from the FBI, Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, Maple Grove Police and Isanti County Sheriff's Department were excavating the site Tuesday.

Maple Grove Police Capt. Keith Terlinden would not say who owned the property or what prompted the search to move there. The search warrant is sealed.

"We are trying to find Amy and that might be a long process or it might be a short process," Terlinden said during a news conference Tuesday in Cambridge. "But our goal is to find her."

Amy Pagnac was 13 when she went missing from an Osseo gas station in 1989 while waiting in a car for her father. Authorities recently renewed their search for the girl.

Maple Grove Police led a search of the Pagnac home, still owned by Amy's parents.

Investigators will be at the Isanti County site around the clock for at least the rest of the week, perhaps into the weekend.

Susan Pagnac says that she and her husband plan to retire on the property.

"Organic farming is what we initially got it for," she said.

She says the family would go up there to hunt mushrooms, pick raspberries and harvest trees on the land.